We recently connected with Abianne Falla and have shared our conversation below.
Abianne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s go back in time a bit – can you share a story of a time when you learned an important lesson during your education?
a. Narrow the region of darkness and then move confidently forward within. I learned this in theory at Acton (an alternative MBA in Entrepreneurship) — but it’s not until building CatSpring that I realized how true the principle is. We often approach education and life as if there’s one correct answer. If I’ve learned one thing as a founder and CEO, it’s that there’s never a single, correct response. Get creative: there are so many ways to build a company. There are as many paths to funding, customers, sales channels, and options for sourcing that you’re willing to entertain — and chances are, innovative approaches will prove successful in the long term. Throughout your decision-making process, gather all of the information you can to “narrow the region of darkness.” If you ask enough questions, you’ll reduce the range of choices — and feel confident making a decision.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
What’s Yaupon? Well, we like to say, “It’s Texan, for tea.”
Simply put, yaupon is the only caffeinated plant native to North America. While virtually all other tea and coffee is imported into the USA, yaupon is not only the sole domestic option – we’re sustainably wild harvesting the native growth. That’s right, we’re responsibly foraging this forgotten resource!
What’s more, folks in our rural community view this plant as a nuisance and treat it like a weed. They are literally bulldozing and burning this incredible resource by the hundreds of acres; completely oblivious to the fact that it’s caffeinated, rich in antioxidants, naturally an anti-inflammatory, and can prevent cancer!
While yaupon has been consumed by millennia (traces of it have been found in ceremonial Native American pottery all over this county), the modern yaupon industry is relatively new. And we have to agree with NPR that, “yaupon may be poised for a comeback that’s long overdue.”
Smooth. Invigorating. Caffeinated.
It actually started with a drought about 13 years ago; it was the driest year in Texas history and statewide, we lost over 300 million trees. On our family property in Cat Spring, Texas, we were losing everything from our 100 year old oak trees to our hay. Except for the yaupon; the yaupon was fine. We started to look into this persistent plant and discovered this legacy of consumption that was long since forgotten! Native Americans consumed and traded it for generations, the Spanish even exported when they arrived but the English didn’t want anything to disrupt the power of the tea trade so they downplayed this native resource.
Once we uncovered this legacy, we experimented with traditional Japanese tea and Yerba Mate (it’s a cousin plant) preparation methods to start producing a yaupon tea. We started producing small batches and selling to restaurants and at farmers markets. People were excited, a couple James Beard nominated chefs put us on their menu, the demand has only grown, and here we are over a decade later.
We also saw that here is this incredible plant that is written off as having any value – people literally bulldoze and burn it as a pest in our area. And there are so many folks in our community that are marginalized or written as having any value for either their past, their education, or a whole host of other reasons. Why wouldn’t we build our company to share both their and yaupon’s values?
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
. There are many to choose from. I think one of the biggest challenges of growing an agricultural and manufacturing company like ours is the fact that growth is tiered. When one process changes, most of the other processes have to change at the same time. I’m often upgrading several aspects of the company at an inflection point. And since growth is tiered, some of the choices we made in the past were made with constraints or factors that are no longer true. So when we are evaluating our next batch of decisions, it’s important to put everything back on the table and make sure we’re not accidentally using some old limiting factors or assumptions.
One of my biggest mistakes to date has been not hiring to meet the demands of the next stage, or not being clear about which projects I needed to hand off to other people on the team. Oftentimes, I’ve shouldered more of the burden than necessary, and the new hire has spun her wheels because she wasn’t set up for success. The success of individuals on your team will make or break your team. I’ve learned it’s important to empower them, and to release everyone to run their race or play their part. It’s important to know what you’re great at, figure out what you can learn, and surround yourself with talented people who can do the rest. That said, I’ve also had to learn which things are worth learning so that I can do them myself, even if it’s only to do them the first time. Actually rolling your sleeves up and doing the work empowers leaders to know how to hire for the role.
As an entrepreneur, I wear many hats, and I’m called to solve diverse problems. I can’t do it all alone. Thankfully, I’ve managed to surround myself with brilliant, creative people, who allow me to ask endless questions and seek their advice and experience. Surrounding myself with champions and creative people has given me the boost to keep going when times get hard. They’re often the ones asking tough questions to help me make sure I’m propelling in the right direction.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
We did not know how to make tea or manufacture yaupon when we started. We first began by watching a whole lot of tea manufacturing youtubes out of China and India. Then we just kept experimenting in our kitchen. Our first commercial harvest was processed in a catering kitchen and everything was done by hand – even the individual teabags! That first year, we would harvest maybe 5 pounds of tea a week. We can do significantly more than that in an hour these days! We’ve had to pull from parallel agriculture industries, create some of our own equipment, and lean on a whole lot of trial and error.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://catspringyaupon.com
- Instagram: @catspringyaupon
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/catspringyaupon
